Widespread crackdowns on Burma's pro-democracy movement have led a broad range of human rights advocates -- from e-mailing campus cyber-revolutionaries to U.S. Senators -- to dub Burma "the South Africa of the 90's". Pressure is mounting for a worldwide embargo on foreign investment. The test of the strategy will be stopping Burma's largest and most controversial project, a natural gas pipeline planned for the rainforest homeland of embattled ethnic minorities. PNS commentator Edith T. Mirante is author of "Burmese Looking Glass: A Human Rights Adventure" (Atlantic Monthly Press).

Early this year the execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa in Nigeria focused world attention on Shell Oil's conflict with that country's Ogoni ethnic group. Today, a similar crisis is unfolding in Burma where a gas pipeline scheme is causing mayhem among indigenous people.

More than a dozen multi-national corporations have paid Burma's junta, the State Law and Order Restoration Council or Slorc, millions of dollars each for the rights to search for petroleum in Burma. Most have come up dry in their on-land efforts and withdrawn. But a few, obtaining off-shore concessions, struck large reserves of undersea natural gas.

The main offshore concessions are a block belonging to Texaco (U.S.), Nippon (Japan), and Premier (UK); another is held by Unocal (US) and Total (France), while the Los Angeles-based Arco recently signed an exploration contract with Slorc as well. To transport the natural gas, Unocal and Total, in partnership with Slorc and neighboring Thailand's Petroleum Authority, have begun a pipeline which will stretch from Burma's Andaman Sea, across its southern Tenasserim region, to electricity generating facilities in Thailand.

The Tenasserim is inhabited largely by the Mon, Karen, and Tavoyan ethnic groups, who have long been in rebellion against Burma's ruling military. Mon rebels are observing a ceasefire with Slorc, but remain armed, and many other guerrilla groups roam the area. To secure the Tenasserim, the Slorc has moved several battalions of troops around the pipeline route, a beefed-up presence reportedly accompanied by large-scale violations of human rights.

Road-building and a railway extension that connects to the pipeline route, as well as construction of new army bases, have made extensive use of ethnic minorities for slave labor, according to Human Rights Watch-Asia, Greenpeace, and Amnesty International. Escaped slaves tell of beatings, torture, rape and murder of captives working on the Tenasserim infrastructure projects by Slorc's security forces.

The foreign oil companies have shrugged off accusations of complicity in the abuses by Slorc security forces. "If you threaten the pipeline there's gonna be more military," predicted Unocal's John Imle in the Bangkok Post. "For every threat to the pipeline there will be a reaction."

For their part, a coalition of rebel forces has vowed to turn the pipeline into "a snake of fire" if it is ever completed, and last year five members of a Total surveying team were killed and eleven wounded in an ambush by Karen rebels of their Burmese army guarded convoy.

In addition to the human cost, the Tenasserim pipeline slices through one of the last tropical rainforest areas of mainland Southeast Asia. This habitat of elephants, tigers and rhinoceros is threatened by construction, and by the likelihood that logging company access will follow a successful security campaign.

The junta is anticipating billions of dollars in revenue from selling gas to Thailand -- a strong incentive for it to hang onto power. But pressure to withdraw is mounting on Slorc's corporate backers from pro-democracy supporters, particularly in the U.S. which ranks as among the Slorc's top five investors. Revelations about military involvement in joint-venture factories have prompted Levi Strauss, Eddie Bauer, Liz Claiborne, and Macy's to quit manufacturing in Burma. Consumer and shareholder pressure continue on the oil companies, and on Pepsi-Cola which has bottling plants in Burmese cities.

Borrowing a tactic from South Africa's anti-apartheid campaign, activists have encouraged selective contracting legislation to bar city and state governments from doing business with companies in Burmese ventures. San Francisco and Berkeley, Calif., and Madison, Wis., have passed such acts, and New York City and the State of Massachusetts have them in process. On a national level, a bill for broad-based economic sanctions against Slorc has been introduced in the U.S. Senate by Senators Mitch McConnell (R-Ky) and Patrick Leahy (D-Vt).

At a time when ethnic insurgency is at a low ebb, and pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi's non-violent campaign to free Burma is facing a wealthy and well-armed Slorc, the international economic strategy seems to be the strongest option for undermining Burma's regime. The true test of that strategy will be stopping the pipeline scheme, and with it the Burmese generals' dreams of natural gas riches.